


Penance

by orphan_account



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Baseball, Broken Bones, Broken Promises, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hostage Situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-10 23:43:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17435744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Just as Benson starts to warm up to Stone (as a friend), a tragedy in the SVU family brings Barba back into her life and casts suspicion on the new ADA and the circumstances that brought him to New York.





	1. Chapter 1

“Noah! What’re you doing there, kiddo? Your hands are halfway up the bat.” Peter Stone, professional baseball-pitcher-turned-homicide-prosecutor-turned-Jack-McCoy’s-golden-boy-ADA smiled broadly at the first grader a few yards away. He nudged Benson, who was bundled up in a winter coat next to him. “Does the coach keep yelling _choke up, choke up, choke up_ at the kids so he feels like he’s helping?” he asked Benson. 

“Give the guy a break,” Benson said, glad to be able to offer her colleague a respite from his grief, regardless of the degree to which he himself was the cause of that grief, she would not allow herself to think, because surely her own bad year, her own somewhat-broken heart, was clouding her judgment of the man who’d offered to help Noah learn baseball fundamentals. “Noah’s coach is the sort of lawyer who didn’t play for the major leagues.”

“All right, let’s do it,” Stone said, tossing a slow underhanded pitch Noah’s way.

Noah missed, letting go of the bat as he spun 720 degrees and landed on the grass.

“Happens to the best of us,” Stone assured him as Benson brushed grass and dirt off his coat.

“I’m not good at this,” Noah complained.

“You’re the one who said you wanted to try little league,” his mother reminded him. “You said baseball was fun.”

“It’s not. And I’m cold.”

“Let’s go home and make hot chocolate. I’ll see if I can find you another team that doesn’t practice before spring.”

“No,” he said. “I hate this.”

“Even the Cubs make mistakes,” Stone told him as they crossed the park together.

“Last time the bat went flying towards where the parents were watching and one of the moms kept screaming at me that I almost killed everybody.” Noah was close to tears. Benson put an arm over his shoulder. “She was mean. I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Listen,” Stone said, kneeling to Noah’s level, stopping both Bensons in their tracks, “I’m the reason the Mets won the World Series 15 years ago.”

“Really? Cool.”

“Not so cool when it happened. During the pennant, the last game, there was a pop fly right over my head that was supposed to be easy to catch, and, you want to know what happened?”

“What?” Noah asked, blinking back tears.

“I leaned forward too far and I fell on my face.” He patted Noah’s arm and stood up again. “I hurt my shoulder and couldn’t play ball anymore.”

“Was everybody mad at you?”

“A few people,” Stone lied. “But after that I went to law school and became a prosecutor.”

“Thank you for today,” Benson said, and she flinched when Stone leaned in and kissed her cheek.

“Any time. Noah, tell your mom to call me next time you want to practice.”

“Okay,” Noah said.

When Stone walked off in the opposite direction, Noah shuddered with his whole body. “He’s not going to be your boyfriend, like Ed was, is he?” he asked bluntly. 

Benson let out a sputtering laugh. “No, sweet boy,” she said, suppressing a _why on earth would you think that?_ Stone was almost 15 years her junior, and she knew better than to open the door to mistrials and overturned verdicts, and besides, Stone was not her type, certainly not the type to look out for the needs of his family, probably not that good in bed either, probably too focused on himself, not that she should make assumptions. 

“If you have a boyfriend again, can it be Uncle Rafa? Because he —”

“Noah!” Benson snapped, more harshly than she’d intended to.

“Sorry,” Noah said, shrinking back a little.

Benson sighed as they crossed the street together. “Do you miss him?” she asked.

“Hm,” Noah said with a shrug.

“I do,” she admitted, hoping her confession would get her son to open up.

“He never called us or came over anymore.”

“I know, sweet boy, I know.” She clutched his hand.

Tucker never called or came over again either, but Noah had never commented on that. Maybe it was because Noah was a toddler when she was with Tucker and didn’t remember how happy and safe he’d felt around him — she didn’t want to retire, though, she couldn’t give him the one thing he wanted from her — and yet it was Barba he remembered. Barba, who she’d never been with romantically, who she’d only started to see as a potential love interest during his last months with the DAs office, who Noah had grown attached to.

Whose absence from their lives he still felt, staggeringly so, a year later.

At home, they drank hot chocolate and Benson promised him that if he wanted to quit after the next practice, she wouldn’t give him a hard time about it.

Half an hour before dinner, when Benson hadn’t yet thought about what exactly they were doing for dinner, a call came in from Rollins. Work, she thought, another Saturday night clusterfuck at the Special Victims Unit.

“Liv,” she heard Rollins strangely high-pitched voice gasp on the other end, “Jesse and I came home half an hour ago and —” She sucked in another breath. “Al was in the kitchen, bleeding out, stab wounds.”

“Where are you now?”

“Crime scene. Our place. They want to take me to the hospital, but, Liv —”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” she promised. 

“Carisi’s coming down too, to look after Jesse while — I don’t know what to do.”

“Hold tight,” Benson said. “We’re here for you.”

She left Noah with their upstairs neighbor who watched him sometimes when she had emergency weekend calls, and promised Lucy time and a half if she gave up her Saturday night to put Noah to bed and wait for her to come back.

Al Pollack’s Upper West Side apartment, which Rollins and her daughter had moved into only a month before, was cordoned off with crime scene tape. Rollins stood in the hallway, her coat still on, but unbuttoned. She was watching CSU and the homicide detectives work.

Benson flashed her badge and hurried over to Rollins, immediately embracing her.

Rollins buried her head in Benson’s shoulder. She was shaking. Benson wrapped her arms as far as she could around the pregnant detective and squeezed tight to keep her steady.

“They want to put me in a bus because I already threw up a few times, you know how it is,” Rollins said. “Carisi’s going to drive me when they’re done here, I don’t want to be in an ambulance, Liv, and he’s downstairs in the community room with Jesse and they had to take Frannie because she’s evidence, she might have bit the guy, and I —”

“Shh,” Benson said, running a hand through Rollins’s hair, “breathe, Amanda. Breathe.”

Rollins nodded. “So, uh, I wanted to see if you could take Jesse tonight, so she’s someplace familiar, with Noah, you know, she saw everything, for God’s sake, my poor baby girl saw everything.”

“I’m not going to ask what happened,” Benson said, “because homicide’s going to make you relive it over and over during the investigation.” She kissed the side of Rollins’s head and led her to the elevators. “Come on, let’s get Jesse and get you to the hospital.”

“Okay,” was all Rollins said.

“She’s clear to go?” Benson asked a detective she recognized from the 27th precinct.

The detective nodded in Benson’s direction.

“He was supposed to testify as an expert witness at a trial up in Albany next week, we were kid of worried he’d miss the baby being born if I went into labor before my scheduled C-section,” Rollins said when they were in the elevator. “Oh God.” Rollins covered her mouth with her hand. “Bastard was lying to me. Got himself killed, didn’t he?”

“You don’t know that,” Benson said.

“He was worried about something.”

Rollins used her key to open the door to the community room, where they found Carisi playing with Jesse, crouched over an activity table. “Momma!” Jesse said, running towards her. “Can we go upstairs now? Is Al going to the hass-ta-bull?”

Rollins flashed Benson a pained look.

“Sweetheart, the grownups are making sure everybody is safe,” Benson offered. “Would you like to have a sleepover with me and Noah tonight?”

“And Momma?’ Jesse asked.

“No, baby,” Rollins said, “but I’ll come see you first thing in the morning.”

“I don’t want to,” Jesse protested.

“I could — Liv, I could just go to your place — the baby’s kicking and I’m sure she’s fine.”

“But are you?” Benson asked.

“I’m going to go to the hospital and see if it’s time for your baby sister to come yet,” Rollins aid, and Jesse seemed more satisfied with that answer. “Okay? Uncle Sonny’s going to take me and you go with Auntie Liv and have a sleepover with Noah.”

Jesse finally agreed. Rollins went back upstairs to ask the detectives to grab a few of Jesse’s things since she knew she wouldn’t be allowed back into the crime scene. Jesse returned to the activity table.

“Hey, Lieu,” Carisi said half under his breath, “Dr. Al wasn’t going upstate to be an expert witness.”

“I figured as much.”

“I’ve got an account on the Albany County DA website. Family court records don’t tell you too much, but I know he was supposed to testify in a custody case.”

“You mean —”

“No, nothing like that. Paternity cases are their own beast. This has something to do with a criminal case that Al and the dad were involved in out-of-state, may be sealed, because looking on my phone now, I’m not seeing any records.”

“And you know that as of now, the murder is none of our business. We’re to leave everything to homicide.”

“I know, I was —”

“Looking out for your friend,” Benson said. “But this is not our case, not by a longshot.”

Rollins returned with a bag of clothes and a stuffed panda for Jesse, which she handed to Benson. “I’ll see you soon, baby girl,” Rollins told Jesse, carefully taking a knee so she could embrace her.

Benson and Carisi helped her to her feet. “We’re family, don’t you forget that,” Benson said, embracing Rollins and planting another kiss on her temple. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Oh God, I’ve got to call my mother. I’ll call my sister, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll call her from the car.”

A few minutes after Benson arrived back at her place with Jesse, she got a call from Carisi: Rollins’s water had broken in the car. She’d been scheduled for a C-section in two weeks on account of her difficult first pregnancy, so they were rushing her into a maternity ward OR to deliver the baby. “Say a prayer for all of them, if you don’t mind, Lieu,” Carisi said, and Benson heard his voice crack. “They’ve been through enough already. If there’s a higher power I wish he’d give them a goddamn break already.”

He fell silent and she wondered if he was crying.

—

At 3AM, Benson woke up to her cell phone buzzing against her bedside table and her heart jumped into her throat. Fin’s name was on the screen. She hoped the news was at least neutral, because no good news ever came out of a 3AM phone call.

“You don’t need to come in,” Fin said, “but you do need to know that we caught a kidnapping case, noncustodial mother. Amber Alert is out. If they cross state lines you might hear from the feds. Might be some organized crime involved too.”

“All right,” Benson said drowsily. 

“There’s more.”

“There always is,” she sighed.

“Dad and his friend have priors for running an illegal sports book operation. Friend is also part of a drawn-out custody case upstate.”

“Oh my God.”

“What’re the chances?’ Fin said.

“Carisi had done some of his own “research” — well, you know Carisi — while he was keeping Jesse away from the crime scene.”

“The brass is going to want us far away from this one.”

Benson rubbed her eyes. “For now, investigate as if we know nothing.”

“On it.”

“Rollins is nowhere near the case anyway. First find the kid. If we need other details to make a sound legal case, let them do what they have to do, but first find the kid.”

A second call was coming in, from Carisi. She said a quick goodbye to Fin and answered the call. “2:21 AM, six pounds one ounce, mom and baby are recovering just fine,” Carisi said, and this time, she could hear for sure that he was crying. “And Frannie did bite the perp on his way out. Probably had no idea there was a dog. They’re gonna catch him thanks to her.”

“Good,” Benson said, laying a hand over her heart.

“You see that Amber Alert?”

“Didn’t come through on my phone yet but Fin’s on it.”

“You know —”

“I don’t know, Carisi, and neither do you.”

“Got it.”

—  
Benson wasn’t quite sure how or why, two weeks after the terrifying night when Rollins’ younger daughter was born, she found herself in the gallery of a courtroom in Albany where Joseph Corcoran and his ex-wife Callie were fighting over custody of their three teenage children in a long, drawn-out divorce. Their oldest was 16. Benson hoped an attorney or social worker in this place 180 miles outside NYPD jurisdiction had advised them to petition to emancipate themselves because this custody battle was more about power than it was about the actual children.

Joseph, along with a guy in Buffalo who still called himself Baby Billy at 57 years old, a grandma named Louise in Rochester, and Mark Gordin, the divorced dad in New York City who’d reported his daughter’s kidnapping by her noncustodial mother, had run an illegal sports book throughout the state, and the gaming commission and states were investigating the quartet for direct involvement with professional sports teams.

They’d returned Valerie Gordin to her father two days after the Amber Alert was sent out, when she and her mother were caught trying to cross the Canadian border from Michigan. Mark’s ex-wife Linda had first gone to see her family in Chicago. Linda’s father reported her to the police.

Chief Dodds assented to Benson’s demand that SVU stay with the Gordin case, as long as Rollins wasn’t involved. He agreed that there was a possibility that both parents had engaged in, or had once engaged in, criminal activities that could endanger their child.

Joseph and Callie Corcoran’s custody case wasn’t part of their agreement. She wasn’t supposed to touch the Dr. Al connection with a ten-foot pole.

But the divorce records were sealed. Divorce records are almost never sealed unless one or both parties are accused of criminal activity, or of something that might be proven false later.

Benson told herself she was there for Valerie Gordin, not for Rollins, not for Rollins’ daughters. Homicide had already been warned not to share what they’d found with SVU for fear of their case against the man whose DNA was in Frannie’s teeth going to shit.

The guy whose DNA was in Frannie’s teeth was the grandson of Louise from Rochester.

Benson wasn’t supposed to know that.

Dr. Al had been granted across-the-board immunity by the Illinois Attorney General more than a decade ago for testifying against the bigger guns in an illegal sports betting ring.

Benson wasn’t supposed to know that either.

In fact, she wished she didn’t know that Amanda Rollins, a recovering gambling addict, had — coincidentally, she hoped — been in a serious relationship with a man who’d been busted for “misdiagnosing” baseball players to keep them on the DL when the bookies sending thousands of extra dollars his way needed certain players to sit out the game.

She kept her findings from Stone, as much as she could use him for his connections to both Major League Baseball and the Illinois Attorney General, because no attorney would be happy with SVU sticking their collective noses into what could be a strong federal racketeering case.

Benson was definitely not supposed to be in Albany, in this courtroom.

A court officer walked through the gallery and towards the bench. She set up the judge’s paperwork, gavel, and a plaque reading _Hon. R. Barba_.

A few months ago, a 20-something uni had jokingly responded to a text from Benson with “*internal screaming*,” a reaction which had seemed odd at the time in her 50-year-old eyes, but now was the only way to describe the way her heart was beating inside her face.

*Internal screaming.*

She hadn’t looked him up, hadn’t Googled him, because he’d never contacted her. She didn’t want to deal with the heartbreak of knowing what he was up to since that day over a year ago when he’d decided he was best off moving on without her.

*Internal screaming.*

Rafael-fucking-Barba, the worst heartbreak she’d faced in years, and they weren’t even romantically involved.

At least he hadn’t come back into her life the way Alex Cabot and Brian Cassidy had last spring.

Her anger was tinged with some relief that Barba’s actions, and his murder trial, hadn’t cut him off from what he’d wanted most for himself, from what his abuelita had dreamed alongside him. 

She laughed to herself at the memory of how _close_ they’d been, on and off throughout the years. She remembered how she’d been a little bit in love with him.

So maybe it was her fault too, because everyone she was a little bit in love with disappeared.

Right.

Internal screaming.

Barba emerged from chambers in a black robe that surely covered a designer suit and sat behind the bench. The gray streaks at the top of his head had widened somewhat, and he was graying near his temples too. His murder trial had aged him. 

After calling the court to order, he shuffled through the file folder on his desk. “Mr. Corcoran, Ms. Batista,” he said with a familiar exasperation in his voice, “tell me we’ve reached a settlement.” He did not look up.

“Not yet,” one of the attorneys said, and the two parties began bickering, only to be shut down by Barba calling the court back to order.

“I’m recommending that the social worker discusses emancipation with the children,” Barba said, “and that the children not be used as pawns in a contentious divorce.”

They were on the same page.

Still, after all this time. _We’d have made a good team_ , she caught herself thinking, _if you hadn’t left._

When he finally looked out at the gallery and saw Benson, his eyes appeared to bug out of his head for a split second. He returned to the Corcorans’ dispute. “Come back when you’re ready to tell the court how you’ll provide for your children. I don’t want to hear about criminal matters not in the purview of family court. My recommendation to the social worker stands. See you in a month.”

He met her in the courthouse hallway, where he’d shed his judicial regalia and was in a black 3-piece suit and long tan coat. “Sidebar?” he asked.

“You mean dinner? I have a three and a half hour drive home.”

“Then you should eat, shouldn’t you?”

“All right,” she said. “Sidebar.” It was hard to be mad at him when he was charming and dedicated and focused Rafael Barba again, but she was, indeed, still mad at him. 

“How’s Rollins?” he asked when they were seated at a restaurant near the city center, a few blocks from the courthouse. His eyes were narrow, head tilted, face full of concern.

Here was her friend Rafael, not with the Rafael Barba who’d forehead-kissed her goodbye as if he’d known nothing about her fears of abandonment, as if she’d never confided in him. She wanted to be furious. He was making that difficult. 

“I didn’t know anything about her connection to the criminal side of the case,” he said under his breath. “I figured that’s why you’re here. I had no idea who this Dr. Pollack the ex-wife was calling was until the last hearing was cancelled. I read about the homicide investigation. I’d have recused myself if I’d known who Pollack was.”

“I’m investigating the kidnapping of Valerie Gordin.”

“Of course. Well, if you’re looking for information from me, I’m not in a position to —”

“I was hoping I’d learn something about the criminal operation Corcoran and Gordin had going on. I had no idea you were the judge. I had no idea you were a judge at all.”

“I didn’t want to —”

“You could have called, once or twice,” she insisted.

“I saw how I let you down.”

“Bullshit.”

“You didn’t need —”

“Judge Barba, Lieutenant Benson,” a voice boomed from above them.

They slowly turned their heads to see Captain Owen Flores of the state police, a decorated officer who’d worked with Captain Dodds on multiple occasions, a man who was very, very hard-line about jurisdiction, who’d already expressed his displeasure that SVU was still involved in the Gordin kidnapping.

So now Barba was an idiot on two counts: one, for leaving her when they needed each other most, and two, for taking her to a restaurant where they might run into a state police captain.

“Captain Flores,” they both said.

“I’ll let you enjoy your meal, Lieutenant, but don’t you think you’re grossly overstepping your bounds by investigating the Gordin case here?”

Thinking quick, Benson grasped Barba’s forearm with both of her hands. “We have to tell people, Rafa, or this is going to keep happening every time I’m up here,” she said, returning to her go-to undercover move. “We don’t work together anymore. We don’t have to worry about formal disclosure.”

He took the hint and followed her lead. “This isn’t about an investigation,” he told Flores.

The captain wrinkled his forehead. “I never would have thought —”

Barba cleared his throat. “We’re doing our best to maintain a long distance relationship while Liv decides whether she wants to move up here.”

“Well, then,” Flores said, “enjoy your meal.”

Afterwards, Barba walked Benson to the lot where she’d parked her car. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, shoving his leather-gloved hands into his pockets.

“About —?” she prompted.

“The Corcorans. Their friends. I wish I could —”

She grabbed both of his arms. “Captain Flores and company, stage left,” she said, tilting her head. Through teeth gritted into a smile, she said, “pretend we’re canoodling.”

He kissed her ear, whispering, “He brought unis to catch us in a lie, hm?”

“Yep,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “I’d probably do the same if the staties were nosing around my case. Can’t blame him.”

“I’m going to put on a show,” Barba warned her.

“Go for it.”

With one of his hands in her hair, thumb tenderly stroking her temple, he planted warm kisses from her jawline down to the last bit of exposed skin on her neck, then back up again, tonguing her skin with each kiss. 

He was tender. 

Focused.

“Clear,” she said when the staties were gone. “Nice work.”

Barba rolled his eyes, then used his gloved hand to bring her bare hand to his lips. “It was rough last year.”

“I know. You could have called.”

“I should have.”

“Don’t recuse yourself. Call me when the Corcorans have resolved their divorce, but not before then, or we’ll both get in trouble.”

“Are you telling me not to call you?” he asked, half-joking.

“No, I mean it. When the staties get on our case about us talking to each other — oh no.”

“What?”

“Flores is going to tell Dodds.”

Barba groaned. “Hopefully they’ll respect our fake privacy.”

“I hope so.”

He kissed her cheek. “I’ll call,” he promised. “I’m doing better.”

“Congratulations,” she said sarcastically.

“But you’re —”

“I’ve got to get home, Rafa.”

“I’ll call,” he said again. They said goodbye and he waited until she drove off.

—

On the drive home, when she should have been thinking about how Gordin got custody of his daughter in spite of his criminal activities and how Dr. Al was connected to all of this, she found herself thinking about Barba’s kisses.

He was acting. He’d have made a good undercover in another life.

But those kisses.

His lips, his tongue. Missed opportunities.

She was enjoying the bumps in the Thruway a little too much. She was a fool.

 _He’ll break your heart again_ , she warned herself out loud in the car.

She willed herself to think about the case. When that didn’t work, she turned up the radio and sang along.

At midnight, back in the familiar space of her apartment, she kissed her sleeping son’s cheek and made a sincere promise that whatever happened, Rollins and her girls would be safe and free from worry.


	2. Chapter 2

Frannie was stretched out on top of a towel on the couch, her chin on Rollins’s lap, her butt pressed to Benson’s hip. She let out a loud, languid sigh.

Benson quickly turned her head. “I didn’t know dogs could sigh like that,” she commented.

Rollins scratched behind Frannie’s ear, then pet the top of her head. “It was rough for her. She was here when Al was murdered, probably hiding in the bedroom, they said, before she went ahead and bit the guy. And then she was whisked off to the lab, had to spend the night away from us.”

“It’ll be all right, Frannie,” Benson said, patting the dog’s back, “in good time. Time is your friend.”

She’d come over to keep Rollins company on a quiet Sunday afternoon, one that she knew would be too quiet for her friend and colleague. Layla, the 3-week-old, slept in the cradle swing opposite the couch. Noah and Jesse were playing in Jessie’s room.

“You want something to eat?” Rollins asked. “My fridge and freezer are full thanks to the Carisis.”

“That’s all right, thanks,” Benson said.

“I’ve got to go down to the two-seven, give another statement, next week. The DA wants motive so he can go for the bigger case.”

“I am so sorry,” Benson said, certain that the “bigger case” only added to Rollins’s heartbreak. “There was no way you could have known —”

“Liv, I knew.”

“I understand if it’s hard to accept —”

“I didn’t know why Al was going to Albany, I believed him when he said he was an expert witness, because I thought Chicago was over.”

“So you did know.”

“Of course I knew. How do you think we met? We were at Gamblers Anonymous together. He got himself into debt real bad, that’s how he ended up working for the sports book racket. Had to get his medical license reinstated and everything when he came here, when he started to rebuild his life. I wish he would have told me if he was in trouble. He was on thin ice with me after last year, but he could have told me.”

“He may not have thought he was in trouble,” Benson suggested. “He was supposed to give brief testimony in a custody case. A very contentious custody case connected to a bookie.”

Rollins rubbed her eyes. “You’re not supposed to be nosing around.”

“It’s connected to the kidnapping I’m working with Carisi and Fin.”

“I thought they found the kid.”

“Mom’s being charged, we’re looking into mitigating circumstances.”

“Stone’s request?” Rollins asked.

“No. But Dodds is on board. Mostly.”

“Please don’t do anything to fuck up the murder case. Layla deserves to know her daddy got some justice in the end, no matter what you might have thought of him.”

“I won’t, I promise. Besides —” She cut herself off, reluctant to say more about last week’s Barba-debacle.

Rollins leaned back into the couch. “Heard you got yourself into some deep shit with the staties.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t get mad. First time I smiled in weeks. Carisi heard you were either nosing around in Albany or in a long distance relationship with Barba, and we recognized your signature move when you’re made.” 

“Sorry,” Benson said.

“What’ve you got to be sorry for?”

“For fucking up the case.”

“Carisi says you didn’t, not yet, at least. Just hold back a little, if you can, for me? Anyway, rumor has it the brass now thinks you’re sleeping with Barba.”

“It was _weird_ ,” Benson whispered loudly.

“Tell me,” Rollins said. “I could use the distraction.”

Benson recounted the events of the previous Friday afternoon and evening to Rollins, whose exhaustion was briefly transformed into bemusement. “And Flores bought it?” she said.

“As far as I know. He seemed suspicious until we put on that show for him.”

“Was the act … believable?”

She almost didn’t want to answer that, but she saw the degree to which she was a source of distraction from Rollins’ trauma, and so continued for the sake of her friend. “It was,” she admitted.

“Something you’d want to act out … more?”

Benson smirked.

“So, yes,” Rollins continued.

“That’d be a terrible idea. For one thing, he’s the judge in the Corcoran case. And —”

“You think too much.”

“I won’t argue with you,” Benson said, patting the whimpering dog between them. “I’m granting you a year where you automatically win every argument.”

“Hey, Liv?”

“Yes?”

“What was the “and”?”

“ _And_ I can’t be linked to the custody case, or the case against the man who killed Al could fall apart. You said so yourself.”

“True, but you were going to say _and he broke my heart_.”

“Amanda.”

“ _And he broke my heart and I sure as hell won’t let him do it again_. Believe me, Liv, I’ve been there. I’m not as good at shutting the whole thing down and never speaking of it again, certainly not as good at compartmentalizing as you are, but I’ve been there, with Nick, with Al, I’ve been there.”

“It’s moot,” Benson said. “I doubt I’ll hear from him again, even if we get into a turf war with the staties.”

“When you guys were making out next to your car, did you get any idea of —”

“We were not “making out.” He was kissing my neck so it looked like we were intimate.”

Frannie stretched and slid off the couch, landing mostly on her feet, then walked off towards her food, which she hadn’t touched yet. “See, look, you cheered up Frannie,” Rollins said. “Frannie thinks you should forgive Barba, or at least find out how he is in bed.”

“Amanda.”

“You said I win every argument for the next year.”

“Regarding the question you were going to ask,” Benson said, her eyes narrowing, “no. He was wearing a coat.”

For the first time in more than three weeks, Rollins laughed.

—

Their cases intersected — the Corcorans’ petty battle for custody of their teenage children, Valerie Gordin’s kidnapping and subsequent return to her father, Dr. Al’s murder over his testimony at the Corcorans’ custody hearing — in ways Barba couldn’t wrap his mind around.

So he didn’t.

He couldn’t remain neutral if he thought too much about the circumstances that had led to him kissing Olivia Benson’s neck in a public parking lot.

The circumstances that led to a reflexive “oh” on her lips, from her throat, that she probably thought he hadn’t heard.

He wondered — would not allow himself to wonder — what other sounds she made when warm lips were on her body, if he could touch her in the right places, would she throw her head back, grit her teeth, moan —

This fantasy had been inappropriate when they worked together, and it was sure as hell inappropriate now, when he’d broken her heart.

And yet.

She’d say his name, in whispers, in groans —

He’d say hers, all four syllables, an arrhythmic beat —

He loved her. Three years ago, he was in love with her, the first person he’d been in love with in a decade, and she’d broken his heart, but he knew he’d broken hers worse, so much worse.

Loss and emptiness and guilt overwhelmed him. He put on his puffy coat, the one with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the right pocket, and went downstairs to the courtyard behind his building.

He’d quit a long time ago for a partner who’d hated the smell, but started back on a pack or two a week during the St. Fabiola’s case, when the stress from — who the perpetrators were, of course, not the sense that Liv had betrayed him on two levels, that would have been wrong to indulge, to be so broken-hearted over — got to him.

The doctor told him two packs a week was as bad as two packs a day, so he gave it up again, shoving snacks in his mouth every few minutes to combat the oral fixation and shaking and stress and heart-broken-every-which-way.

But now he’d betrayed her. Over a year ago, he’d betrayed her, overstepping his bounds as a prosecutor. Whatever the jury and the state senate said, he’d been wrong, and he’d been even more wrong to leave her standing there when he knew how much she feared and hated heel turns from the people she loved.

Behind him, he heard footsteps that didn’t really register until something hit him in the back.

A loud _smack_ , and then his knees buckled.

Another _smack_ , a punch this time, to his face. He was on the ground.

A kick to his side, another, and another.

The footsteps receded. He was still conscious, conscious enough to be furious with himself for not looking at his attackers. One had punched him in the face, for God’s sake, how could he have not registered a description of a man who was punching him in the face?

Neighbors ran out to help him. He spat out blood, which he hoped was only from injuries to his mouth. 

The pain in his back was overwhelming. He wanted to scream but could barely muster the voice to tell the paramedics his name and what year it was.

“Baseball bat,” he heard a cop say as the paramedics carefully loaded him into the stretcher.

—

Benson was just about to leave Rollins’ place when the phone call came in from a detective with the state police.

Barba had been beaten badly by two or three attackers in the courtyard outside his building. The attackers had broken all of his ribs, and he was about to go into emergency surgery so the doctors could clear bone fragments out of his chest. 

He’d been in a lot of pain and had angrily told the staff not to call anyone for him. 

A doctor said she needed a contact for him, someone who could sign papers on his behalf if he was unconscious or on a lot of painkillers. One of the officers who’d been out with Captain Flores the previous week told them about Benson. 

When Benson told Rollins the news, she first said that the detective absolutely had to get in touch with NYPD homicide _right fucking now_ , and then offered to watch Noah for the night so Benson could drive up to Albany.

“I’m not leaving you with three kids,” Benson said.

“I’ve known the neighbor down the hall for a year, since I started spending time here with Al, well before I moved in. She’s stayed a couple of evenings to help me out, so I could eat enough to nurse Layla. So has Carisi. I can always call Carisi too. Do what you need to do.”

“I need Carisi at work tomorrow.”

“We’ll take Noah to school, Jesse to her school, and then Carisi will go to work. It’ll be fine. Go take care of what you have to take care of.”

“If I’m seen interfering in a state investigation on behalf of friends, I’ll lose my badge.”

“You’re not. Flores and Dodds think you’re Barba’s girlfriend. It’ll look worse for you if you’re _not_ there.”

Rollins had a point. And, prior broken hearts aside, Barba must have been terrified, probably painting over his horror with anger and disaffection as they wheeled him into surgery. 

With some resignation, but also a lot of worry, Benson drove up to Albany on a below-freezing Sunday night in February.

—

The state detective she’d spoken to earlier called her during a long, dark stretch between Thruway exits to let her know that Barba was out of surgery. “While I have you on the phone,” he said, “do you know anyone who might have been out to get him?”

“Not in our personal life, no,” she said, careful not to mention Corcoran, or Gordin, or Dr. Al, protecting her badge and the integrity of the Valerie Gordin case as the _our_ rolled awkwardly off her tongue.

She arrived at the hospital at midnight, told the staff who she was — or wasn’t — and was taken up to Barba’s room. He was awake, staring at the ceiling, probably jetlagged from the anesthesia.

His eyes were red — one bruised and swollen — and an oxygen cannula was in his bruised and lumpy nose. Benson stood over the bed.

“Liv,” he said in a breathless whisper.

She took his hand. “How are you doing?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I have to be here, to cover our asses on our story.”

“Whoever did this is obviously connected to Al Pollack’s murder, which is connected to your kidnapping case too, however loosely. Anyone stupid enough to attack a judge is also stupid enough to attack a lieutenant.”

“I can handle myself.” Damn it, she thought, she was going to have to ask Dodds for a detail on her and Noah on account of _her being Barba’s girlfriend_. And then Dodds would probably take her off the Gordin case too, before she could find out how much danger Mark and Linda Gordin’s three-year-old was in, and from who. 

The folks in Albany and Washington focused on building a new racketeering case against the sports book were not going to go out of their way to protect a three-year-old. 

“You always have,” Barba said, and she appreciated the trust in his voice.

“So what happened?”

“Please don’t make me describe it again. The detectives came to see me in the recovery room. Couldn’t wait to talk to me. Assholes.”

She rubbed his forearm with her free hand.

“Baseball bat,” he said.

“A message.”

“Who knows?”

“Rafa, I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault. Not mine either. Let’s hope they’re dragging Corcoran out of bed tonight.”

She moved her hand up to his shoulder, drawing circles near his back, keeping up a gentle pressure. “Did you, or anybody, call your mother?”

“No,” he said, “she can’t know about this. You don’t understand what this would do to her.”

“What are you going to do when she calls?”

“Lie,” he said plainly. 

He looked up at her and she wasn’t quite sure what washed over him as she continued to rub his shoulder, but he shut his eyes tight, squeezing all the muscles in his face as if the punches hadn’t weakened them. 

She lowered the rail and sat at the edge of the bed. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re with me. Let it out if you need to.”

He sucked in a breath, which she imagined must have been difficult on account of the broken ribs. 

“It’s okay,” she repeated, leaning so that her upper arm was resting on the propped-up top half of the hospital bed.

With that, he pressed his forehead into her arm and started to cry, silently.


	3. Chapter 3

No casual observer that February night would have guessed that Lieutenant Olivia Benson and The Honorable Rafael Barba weren’t actually lovers, that they’d spoken for the first time in a year only ten days ago, after Barba had brought about deep rifts in their friendship, when both were certain that they’d never speak to each other again. Barba cried into Benson’s arm for a few minutes while she stretched out her other arm so she could pet his hair. Benson whispered reassurances to him, promised that if, when he was feeling better, he agreed to talk about last year, they’d work out what was between them, repair their friendship.

They talked for a few minutes with her perched on the edge of his bed, until she told him he should try to get some sleep, and he looked up at her, green eyes wide and glistening, a little stoned from the intravenous pain meds. She kissed a bruise-free spot on his face and held his hand until he fell asleep.

She dozed off in the chair next to the window. They were both awakened at 5 in the morning by a nurse coming to take Barba’s vitals.

“If your vitals are good and you can keep food down you’ll get to go home this afternoon, Mr. Barba,” the nurse said. “You’ll need some help getting around for 48 hours, though.”

Barba looked alarmed. “She has to get back to her son,” he said immediately.

“Sorry, they’re not going to discharge you unless someone signs off that they’ll be with you for 48 hours.”

When the nurse was gone, Barba said, “Sign the papers and go home. What’s one more lie?”

“The other lie has to do with our jobs. This one’s about your health. Is there anyone —”

“There’s no one I’m close enough with here.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m reluctant to form new friendships, let’s just say, after what happened between us.”

She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “PD up here put a detail on your place.”

“A police detail can’t help me shower.” He thought about that for a few seconds. “Come to think of it, neither can you.”

Benson didn’t respond, and went out into the hallway to call Rollins instead. Rollins told her to stay the two days, that she’d FaceTime with Noah in the evening, and between her neighbor, her babysitter, Carisi, Fin, and Lucy, everything was taken care of. “I heard he was hit with a baseball bat,” Rollins said. “That’s a message from the bookies to back off. Never heard of ‘em being so bold as to attack a judge, though.”

“Me neither.” In the pit of her stomach she felt unease about leaving Noah for so long, knowing that Sheila Porter was still in the back of his mind, in the back of her mind too. 

“I’m staying,” she told Barba when she was back in the room. 

“Don’t do that to Noah. I’m not going to keep his mother from him.”

“Rafa, you need someone to help you move around your apartment for two days, or you’ll wind up back here.”

“Fine,” he said. “But, uh, I’ll shower on my own.”

“You are my boyfriend,” she teased. “Per NYPD and state police brass.”

She saw him blush beneath his bruises. “Even if we were really together, that seems like silly terminology at our age.”

“My man,” she said, and they both laughed.

“Your idiot,” he corrected.

“Don’t you dare say that about The Honorable Rafael Barba.” A smile ghosted her lips, and his eyes smiled back at her.

—

Benson drove Barba to his place after he was discharged from the hospital at 6. They greeted the officer stationed in a squad car outside, and ordered food. Barba wasn’t hungry but knew he needed to eat. Benson went into the office — what had been designed as the apartment’s second bedroom — to FaceTime Noah. She didn’t tell him exactly where she was, afraid to give Noah false hope that Barba was back in their lives. 

Her heart broke for Barba, but she wasn’t ready to trust that he wouldn’t pull another heel turn in a few weeks.

Barba couldn’t lift his arms above his head, so Benson had to help him with his shirt. He’d come up with a good strategy for the shower: he wet his hair, wrapped himself in a towel, let Benson take care of the shampoo, and then stepped back into the shower. 

He offered Benson the bed, and she laughed. “How nice of you,” she said, “but I’m not the one with 18 broken ribs.”

“I’m disappointed. When the first did the X-ray they said I broke all of them.”

“More than, say, three broken ribs still means you’ve got bragging rights. You need help getting into bed?”

“No,” he said, waving a hand at her as if to indicate _of course not_ , but then he considered his condition for a second. “Yes. Please.”

She helped him climb into bed and lean back on the three pillows propped up behind him; the doctor said it would be a while before he could sit up on his own from a fully reclined position. He kissed her hand, just like he had in the parking lot a week and a half ago.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Get some sleep, all right?”

“We’ll talk tomorrow?”

“If you’re feeling up to it.”

—

In the morning, she was surprised to find him awake before she was, starting a pot of coffee in the eat-in kitchen. He wore only pajama pants, and she shuddered at the dark bruises on his back. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” he said, sensing her behind him. “The doctor said that the bruises would get worse before they got better. Don’t hover.”

Barba’s phone rang. Startled for a moment — Benson could see that he was hiding how on-edge he was — he picked it up off the counter and answered it. 

“Sure,” he said, “send him up.” He set the phone back on the counter. “Captain Flores,” he told Benson. “Can you help me put on a T-shirt?”

“Of course.”

As she pulled a gray shirt down over his head, they found themselves face-to-face for a moment. He raised his eyebrows. Smiled. 

And then Flores was knocking on the door.

When Benson greeted him, Flores seemed genuinely surprised, almost relieved, that his suspicions that the judge and lieutenant were lying about their romantic relationship were unfounded. “How are you feeling, Judge Barba?” he asked, seating himself at the kitchen table.

“Coffee? And it’s Rafael, please.” She noticed that he didn’t answer the question of how he was feeling.

“Honey, please, sit down, I’ve got the coffee,” she said. “You need to be off your feet. Did you move the sugar so you could reach it more easily?”

She didn’t want Flores to know she’d never been in Barba’s kitchen before the previous night.

“Yes,” he said, not missing a beat. “I moved it to the cabinet in front of you.”

IAB would have burned all their badges in a bonfire, but she half-wished she’d have used Barba in a couple of undercover operations way back when.

“My guys have been looking for your attackers all night, I’ve had them on 12-hour shifts,” Flores said. “It’ll be soon. Anyone who’s dumb enough to attack a judge is dumb enough to be caught.”

“Are you looking at the sports betting racket? I know you’re not one to yield jurisdiction to the feds,” Benson said, “but this —”

“Is a situation where we might have to yield jurisdiction,” Flores admitted. “Since I have you here, Lieutenant Benson —”

“Olivia,” she corrected.

“I need to speak to you in private.”

“About jurisdiction?”

“I have information that might help you with one of your cases. I was going to call down to Manhattan after I came to see Rafael. No turf wars, I promise.”

“I’ll go in the bedroom,” Barba said, wincing as he stood. He took his coffee with him. 

“Valerie Gordin?” Benson asked when Barba was gone.

“Yes. You folks are looking into mitigating circumstances for the wrong parent.”

“Mark Gordin was one of the masterminds of the gambling ring back in Illinois. He and Joe Corcoran —”

“Keep Corcoran out of this. Corcoran’s ours, maybe the feds’ eventually, and you don’t want any accusations of impropriety on account of your relationship with Rafael.”

“He and an unnamed co-conspirator who I have no idea exists — does that work? — Brought what was left of their operation to New York, dropping only the worst part of their fraud, paying off doctors to keep players out of the games. I’m sure they’ve found new and innovative ways to throw games since then, so who knows who comes in and out of that house where a three-year-old lives?”

“Gordin’s criminal activities are outside of your jurisdiction, outside the scope of your case.”

“So,” Benson said, folding her hands on the table, “Gordin is an informant.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Just because he’s an informant doesn’t mean he’s a good guy,” Benson said. “Did you offer him custody in exchange for his cooperation? Because I can’t —”

“No comment,” Flores said.

“There’s a family court judge in the next room who’d be outraged to hear that you’re not doing what’s in the best interest of a child.”

“I have three children of my own, and I wouldn’t mess with family court decisions. What I am saying is that _your_ search for mitigating circumstances, _your_ interfering in the case, may not be in Valerie Gordin’s best interest. I don’t doubt that Linda loves Valerie, I have no concerns about her physically hurting Valerie, but you need to know that Linda is as much of a career criminal as her husband.”

“Before the kidnapping, she had no record.”

“She was that good. All I’m telling you is that your next step needs to be to look into Linda’s financial transactions.”

—

“You actually can’t tell me anything about the Gordins,” Barba said later that night, when Benson was helping him into bed after his shower. “I need to remain impartial on the Corcoran case, and I can only take in information about Joseph Corcoran that I receive through the courts.”

“Okay,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I’ve been sleeping all day. You’re heading home tomorrow and we haven’t had the chance to talk yet.”

“We’ve talked a lot.”

“I mean about last year.”

“You said you were sorry, you said you regretted your decision, what more is there?” She smiled sadly and started to leave the bedroom, but changed her mind and sat on the empty side of the bed instead. “Go on. Talk to me.”

“I felt guilty that I couldn’t sign off on pulling the plug on my father. I hated him. I couldn’t do that to someone I hated, because it was like killing him and granting him mercy at the same time.”

“You’ve told me this.” She laid down on her side. “I still don’t quite understand how it relates to your decision to flip the switch on the Householder baby.” 

“Because Maggie Householder knew what she needed to do, but couldn’t do it. In the moment, I thought I was helping. When I was arrested on my way out of the hospital —” 

He stopped, closing his eyes, swallowing hard.

“It’s all right, Rafa,” Benson said, reaching over to touch his bare shoulder, “you don’t have to.”

“I was remembering the alarms, and the sirens. I realized immediately that I was wrong. Dworkin mounted a great defense about the law not yet being caught up to medical ethics — and he’s right, never tell him I said that — but I was wrong. It was Maggie’s place to flip that switch, not mine.”

“So, you were wrong. You did something awful, and moved on.”

“I thought I had to move on because I wasn’t the man you knew anymore.”

“Then that whole thing about the colors was just you trying to spare my feelings? Because you didn’t.”

“Olivia,” he said, trying to roll onto his side, cursing when a wave of pain hit him. 

“Let me get you a Percocet so you can sleep.”

She came back with the pain pill and a glass of water. After he swallowed the pill and set the glass on the bedside table, he patted the space beside him. She laughed.

But she knew he wanted her there.

She crawled under the covers this time, sitting up so that she could look at him. “Make sure you sleep on three pillows like this for the rest of the week so you can get out of bed on your own.”

“I will.”

She leaned down to kiss his lips. “Before the painkillers kick in,” she said.

Bending his arm at the elbow, he was able to reach his fingers up to play with her hair. “We make a believable couple, don’t we?”

“I _believed_ a little the other night. In the parking lot.”

He was smiling — grinning, almost, all teeth — when he pulled himself up a few degrees. He kissed her just below her jawline.

“You did it like this,” she said, her lips on his neck, demonstrating what she meant. 

His breath quickened. “God, Liv, you’re giving me a lot of reasons to recover as quickly as possible.” He hand on her cheek, he turned her head so he could kiss her lips. 

“Get some sleep,” she said softly. 

“Stay?” he asked.

She laid her head down on the pillow and squeezed his hand, not letting go. “You’ll be fine,” she promised him. 

“I love you.”

That declaration took her a few seconds to process. 

“I’m a fool who broke your heart, but I love you,” he continued.

“Yeah, that’s the Percocet talking,” she told him. After a minute: “I love you too, Rafa.”

—

She drove back the next afternoon and was at work again on Thursday morning. She had meetings with Stone and Dodds, so she assigned Carisi the task of looking into Linda Gordin’s finances.

“Lieu,” Carisi said when Benson returned from 1PP in the afternoon, “we’ve got to talk in your office.”

Benson nodded. Carisi grabbed his laptop and hurried into her office, where he flopped down in a chair and scrolled through whatever he had on the screen, tapping the arrow keys frantically. Benson sat opposite him. 

The last time she’d seen him this pale was the night Dr. Al was murdered.

“So, uh, your tip about Linda was on target, lots of financial transactions that look like they belong to a career criminal. But this isn’t us. This isn’t SVU’s business.”

“The person who told me about Linda wanted to make clear that Mark, despite his own criminal history, was awarded custody of Valerie for a reason. I can’t tell you much, but I believe Mark was trying to get out of the racket, and Linda was vehemently against that idea. So now we make sure there’s a social worker on Valerie, and we drop the case.”

“Lieu.” His leg was shaking, bouncing up and down. “That’s not the only reason they — whoever you’re talking to from the state police — told you.” He pushed the laptop towards Benson. “December 10th, 2017. January 12th, 2018. February 9th, 2018. March 9th, 2018. Payments of $50,000 apiece. I went down to the bank. Subpoena from a couple weeks ago was still valid. Lieu, the account those payments went into was owned by Aaron and Maggie Householder.”

Olivia Benson had let out a lot of incredulous “What?”s during her long career with SVU. This “What?” was, by far, the loudest.


	4. Chapter 4

When Benson asked the Householders if they could come in to answer a few questions, or if she could visit them, they lawyered up.

“I mean, invoking your right to counsel isn’t an indication of guilt,” Carisi said, a reasonable thought, a true statement, but Benson’s stomach churned when the Householders’ attorney said they had been through enough and were not compelled to talk to NYPD unless there was evidence of a crime.

“Our kidnapping case and the custody case Barba was presiding over were both about divorces,” Carisi said, “so maybe this was too? Judges and attorneys being paid off, there was a murder case like that a couple decades ago.”

“Then why was money flowing _to_ the Householders?”

“Just trying to come up with an alternate theory. Hoping there’s an alternate theory, you know? But I get what you’re saying, because the Householders are still married, never went through with that divorce. I just don’t want to think about what the implications are here.”

“Me neither,” Benson said. “But it’s our job to think about those implications. The Householder case was ours from the start, so I’m going to talk to Stone, see if we can get his notes from when he was special prosecutor.”

“All right. Let me know if you need anything.”

“And — you should be aware — Dodds and the state PD brass may believe that Barba and I have been in a long distance relationship for months.”

She saw Carisi take a step back, almost stumbling. “Yeah, I heard the story. Rollins and I figured you were pulling your signature undercover move. I’ll, uh, maintain your cover.”

“Thank you.”

“Barba’s doing all right?”

“As well as he can given the circumstances. He’s in a lot of pain, but … you know Barba.”

“Thought I did, till last year’s mess,” Carisi said. “But now —”

“I’ll talk to Stone. We’ll sort this out.”

Stone was surprised to see her, but offered her a broad smile and a cup of coffee when she showed up at his office. “I need your files from Barba’s trial last year,” she told him. 

His smile faded. “For a case?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Sure, I’ll send everything over to your office tomorrow. It’s from when I was special prosecutor, when I didn’t have a permanent place here yet, so the files are probably upstairs with McCoy’s administrative assistant.”

She could have sworn that Stone’s hands were trembling, his voice a bit shaky, microscopic beads of sweat forming along his hairline. But she’d been through a lot during the last year, the last decade, and Barba’s departure had punched her in the heart more than she cared to admit. She acknowledged that maybe all of that was clouding her senses, leading her to see tells where there were no tells. 

“Was the case compromised?” Stone asked, standing from behind his desk, pacing the office floor. “Since Barba was found not guilty, I can’t see how pursuing a lead like that —”

“I’m the police lieutenant, I decide what leads to pursue. You indict the ham sandwiches, as McCoy is fond of saying.”

“Right, right,” Stone said. “I’ll get everything to you tomorrow. I promise.”

He undid the top button of his dress shirt, simultaneously loosening his tie. She’d seen him do that a million times before, but today, she read it as a tell.

Clearly, she wasn’t thinking straight on account of Stone being the man who prosecuted Barba, the man who’d replaced Barba.

Unless.

A thousand what-ifs crossed her mind.

This was the man who was teaching Noah to hit a ball, who’d convinced him to give the game another try. _Wait until tomorrow_ , she told herself, _don’t worry about it unless he comes up with an excuse not to send the files over._

—

The files from Barba’s murder trial arrived the next morning before Benson came in, which gave her some peace of mind. “We need evidence of a crime,” she told Fin and Carisi, “or we can’t question the Householders.”

“I tried to get Linda Gordin to come down,” Carisi said. “Told her we’re still working on mitigating circumstances on her behalf. She and her lawyer didn’t buy it, said they’ll see us in court next month if the city can’t plead her down to a suspended sentence.”

“What’re you thinking here, Liv?” Fin asked.

“A big what-if.”

“I get where you’re going with this, but are you sure this isn’t about your friendship with Barba?”

“For all I know, it might be, but those payments of $50,000 from Linda, who state PD recognizes as a career criminal, to the Householders starting the month before we caught that case and ending a month after Barba’s trial, that’s some coincidence.”

Fin shrugged. “Could be related to their divorce.”

“I said the same thing,” Carisi said, “but then the money would have been coming _out_ of the Householders’ account, right?”

“Just find evidence of a crime,” Benson said, “so we can question the Householders.”

The fact that Stone had sent over the complete file, including his handwritten notes from last year, was a measure of relief for Benson. A second came that night, shortly after she put Noah to bed. Barba called to tell her that his attackers had been caught. They were two COs who’d recently been let go; they were told they could make a couple of extra bucks beyond their unemployment benefits if they beat Barba bloody.

“They’ve been arrested on assault and battery, and the COs who told them to go after me were picked up on conspiracy charges. They won’t do more than three years each, I’m sure, since I’m not dead and they weren’t interfering with any of my cases.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Not dead,” he answered. 

“Seriously.”

“Bored,” he said. And _scared_ , she assumed, he was good at hiding that. “I go back to work on Wednesday.”

“Good,” she said, trying not to think about the Householders, trying not to worry if anyone else was after Barba.

“I recused myself from the Corcoran divorce. I knew too much.”

“Sorry about that.”

“You were doing your job. You couldn’t have known that I was the judge.”

“I didn’t know that you were a judge, period.”

“I called my mother this afternoon, told her all about what happened, that the guys had been caught. I promised I’d visit in two or three weeks, when my, ah, range of motion is better. I’d like to — if you’re up for it — take you on a proper date.”

“A proper date,” she echoed.

“Dinner, a walk in the park if the weather is nice, you know what I mean.”

“You want to catch up with the lie we told Flores?”

He laughed. “I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Neither would I.”

—

She couldn’t get the worst _what if_ s out of her head: What if Aaron Householder made sure that Manhattan SVU caught his kidnapping case, and what if Maggie Householder had baited Barba into flipping the switch on their baby, and _what if_ the Householders were working for Linda Gordin or someone above her?

On Saturday evening, she brought Noah and a bottle of good Cabernet to Rollins’ place. Carisi was there too, delivering more food to fill Rollins’ fridge. Benson poured them each a glass of wine.

Rollins took a sip. “Worth the pump and dump,” she said.

“Same here,” Carisi said, and Rollins smacked his arm. 

“So,” Rollins said, leaning across the kitchen counter, “i’ve got some good … career … news. Good for me, maybe not good for you guys.” Her smile betrayed worry, and Benson was sure this was about to turn into yet another ending, another “moving on except for occasional guest appearances in Olivia Benson’s life” situation, if Rollins’ news was that good.

At least she knew now, after too many surprises, how to brace herself.

“Liv?”

“Go ahead,” she said, raising her glass.

“I was offered a 9-to-5 with the NYPD forensics lab. The sergeant who heads it up is retiring in two years, and he said if I take the sergeant’s exam this summer I’d be in line for his job. It’s regular hours and, if I’m promoted, a much higher salary. But Liv,” she said, resting a hand on Benson’s back, “I’ll be in 1PP, so we’ll see each other every time you’re there, and you’ll visit me here at home, I’ll visit you at your place, the kids’ll play, it’ll be good.”

“Amanda, this is wonderful,” Benson said, hugging her friend as they both clutched their wine glasses.

Carisi was fidgeting.

“You can come visit me too,” Rollins said. “I see those puppy-dog eyes.”

“That’s … that’s not really it.”

“Oh, you mean what we talked about the other day.”

Carisi nodded and took a long, drawn-out sip of Cabernet. “I got a job offer too. The Attorney General has an office here in Manhattan. So I’m not going anywhere either, Lieu, but you’re going to have to promote a couple of your detective second-grades to first grade.”

“You’re going to be an attorney,” Benson said. 

“I’ve thought about it for a long time. The new gig starts in May, so we’ve got time.”

Even with their reassurances, their friendship, the loss of two-thirds of her senior staff was a blow to her. At least Fin, who was with his son’s family tonight, had sworn to her that he wasn’t going anywhere until he retired in two years, and Fin was one to keep his promises.

Rollins and Carisi had done nothing wrong, and yet, because of her history with friends and lovers, her heart ached at their good news. She chided herself for her selfishness.

“Aw, Liv,” Rollins said, embracing her again. 

“This is the best thing for you and your girls,” Benson assured her. “And you, Carisi, I’m so proud. I’m proud of both of you. And, wow, Fin and I have a lot of work to do with promotions.”

They sat together at the dining room table for a while, drinking wine and listening to the kids play while Layla, who almost had day and night sorted out, slept in the bassinet that Rollins had wheeled out into the living room. “It’s good, though,” Rollins said, a little lost in thought, her elbows on the table, both hands on the stem of her glass. “We needed a win, since the case against the guy who killed Al is going to shit.”

Benson’s face fell. “Why?”

“The EADA is concerned about motive.”

“I’ve seen lots of cases prosecuted on zero motive.”

“Yeah, well, not this one.” She looked into her almost-empty glass. “They’ve been good about keeping me in the loop, at least. Their case rests on the idea — on the _fact_ , I mean, his DNA was in Frannie’s teeth, for God’s sake — that the perp killed Al so he couldn’t testify in the custody case upstate. But they can’t lock down that motive, so —”

“So without motive, the DNA’s circumstantial.” Carisi, ever the lawyer, pointed a finger in the air. “Since Frannie coulda bit him on the street days before the murder.”

“There you go,” Rollins said.

“I thought he was related to someone in the sports book ring,” Benson said. “Louise from Rochester, handled their New York books when they were based in Chicago, made it possible for all of them to come over here and start anew, not that I know any of that.”

“Defense attorney supposedly has a laundry list of Al’s patients from both here and Chicago who had motive to kill him too. Reasonable doubt. If the motive’s in doubt, so’s the reason why Frannie bit him.”

Layla started to cry from the bassinet in the next room. Rollins heated up a bottle from the fridge.

“You know what I never understood?” Carisi said. “On tv shows, there’s always this joke where a new mom’s friend, always a guy, takes a baby bottle out of the fridge, shakes some of it into his coffee, and then drinks it. The mom always says “that’s breast milk!” and he does a spit take and the audience cracks up. Why would you put milk from a little infant’s bottle in your coffee? It’s either gonna be breast milk or formula, that’s it. There’s no way it’d be regular milk. I’ll never understand why they keep making that joke.”

Rollins, cradling Layla, sat at the table and gave her the bottle. “He’s full of these observations, Liv,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But I’ll still miss having you as my partner.”

Carisi’s phone chimed. He looked at the screen and very nearly did a spit take identical to a sitcom character realizing he’d put breast milk in his coffee.

“What is it?” Benson asked.

“Call Captain Flores, tell him Barba needs to be in a safehouse until we sort out one more thing.”

Benson’s heart raced. “Why?”

“Aaron Householder was born with a hole in his heart, fixed when he was a baby, but he still had to be under the care of a cardiologist as an adult.”

“How did you —”

“I have a couple of our second-grade guys names to connect, no other details, all right?”

“Aaron Householder?” Rollins said. “The guy with the baby?”

“We think Barba might have been baited into flipping the switch on the Householder baby,” Benson explained. “Might have something to do with a woman involved in the same gambling ring that had Al keeping players on the disabled list to throw games. This gives us another point of overlap. But, Sonny, Rafael is fine. They caught a couple of …” She trailed off. “Let me call Flores.”

When Benson returned to the table, Rollins poured her a second glass of wine. “Here’s a what-if for you guys, the what-if to end all what-ifs: What if two groups, the bookies and the COs, wanted Barba’s career with the DAs office over? They’d have had a good reason to want to work together. Now, the COs fell short of their goal, because Barba’s whole career wasn’t destroyed, he went on to become a judge within a few months. That’s why they were mad enough to have him attacked last week. But the bookies left Barba alone, because they got exactly what they wanted.”

“Holy —” Rollins said, covering her mouth with her hand. “That’s an awfully big what-if, even for you.”

Carisi wrinkled his forehead. “They wanted Barba out because —”

“So _Stone_ could take his place, Stone, specifically.”

“Oh my God,” Rollins said, “if what you’re saying is true, if Stone’s on the take —”

“I let him play baseball with Noah. He’s come over to our apartment. I haven’t misjudged someone this badly since —”

“We don’t know yet,” Rollins interrupted. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“You’re saying the bookies baited Barba into doing something that would make him leave the DAs office so they could install Stone?” Carisi was incredulous. “That’s a lot of logical leaps.”

“It is,” Rollins said, “but if it’s true, then Al might have been killed because he figured out what his patient was up to. He might have been killed because his relationship with me coincidentally connected him to SVU.”

—

Benson braced herself as an armed officer let her into the North New Jersey motel room that state police used as a safehouse.

“What the fuck is going on, Liv?” Barba snapped from the opposite end of the room. She’d expected that reaction because she’d have probably lashed out in the same way.

“Rafa, sit down, please.”

“I will not.” He folded his arms across his chest, then uncrossed them and pulled at the collar of his long-sleeve polo shirt and bit his lip in pain. “One minute, they tell me they got the guys who attacked me, that it’s the COs I pissed off way back when, and then the next minute, the state police are whisking me off to this place. What is going on, Liv?” His expression softened just a bit, from anger and outrage into anger and worry. “What happened?”

“Will you sit?’ she asked.

He sat in one of the two chairs by the round table that she was certain the officers had moved away from the window for Barba’s safety. She sat across from him and started to tell him the story of what she and Carisi had found, about the $50,000 payments to the Householders.

“That’s circumstantial, though,” he said, looking down at the table.

“Last night, we found out that Dr. Al Pollack was Aaron Householder’s cardiology. We think Al owed the bookies one last favor before they’d consider him out for good. He probably thought the favor would be throwing another game.”

“He did,” Barba said, “in a sense.”

“We think he was murdered when they found out he was with Rollins.”

Barba closed his eyes. “And I’m next, because the Corcoran case happened to land on my desk. Qué suerte.”

She reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “We don’t know that for sure. They’re keeping you here out of an abundance of caution. We think they wanted you out of your old job to get someone friendly to them, someone on their side, into your seat.”

“Stone?”

“We don’t know.”

“You clearly know enough to have me dragged off to middle-of-nowhere New Jersey while I’m recovering from 18 broken ribs and major surgery, and —” He rubbed his forehead, and she could see that he had a pounding headache. “I don’t understand why they’d target SVU. Why not an ADA with the gaming commission, with vice, with homicide, even?”

She took a few steps closer. “Can I get you something for that headache?”

Barba shook his head. “Percocet was only for five days. Had my follow up with the surgeon on Friday, and she said nothing harder than Tylenol until the bruises turn yellow.”

“And you’re quitting again.”

“Hm?”

“Smoking.”

“It was only a pack or two a week. But, yes, migraines, from that.” His hand still on his forehead, he paced back and forth behind the bed. “This is the last thing I need. I’m supposed to be home resting for three more days until I get back to work.”

“Abundance of caution,” she reminded him.

“I don’t _care_. I don’t fucking care.”

“All right, then.”

“They can’t compel me to stay. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Your decision,” she said. “But first thing tomorrow, Carisi and I are questioning the Householders.”

“You’ve got a case full of circumstantial evidence. Don’t expect them to say anything.”

“My point is —”

“I understand your point. But I’m not staying.”

She closed the space between them and ran a hand up and down his arm. He looked away, somewhere between the wall and the floor.

“How about that date?” she asked.

That prompted a 720-degree eyeroll from him. “In the safehouse I’m in because I might have been stupid enough to walk into an elaborate trap.”

“There are some good Italian places up here. We’ll order in, I’ll see if I can get us a bottle of wine … how about it?”

He closed his eyes, a sad expression washing over his face. “Fine. But I’m going back to work on Wednesday no matter what.”

Benson went out to pick up a bottle of wine, and had food delivered to the front desk in one of the officers’ names. When she returned, Barba was sleeping in the chair, his hand on his forehead. She kissed the top of his head to wake him up.

As soon as he’d shoved a few forkfuls of pasta into his mouth, his spirits improved a bit. “Thank you for staying with me last week,” he said between bites. “You’ve certainly gone out of your way for a guy who may have compromised the DAs office.”

 _I have_ , she thought, _but the “guy who may have compromised the DAs office” is definitely not you._

“None of us could have known,” she reassured him. “I’ve been on the force for almost 30 years, a detective for 20, a commanding officer for six, and I never thought to look into the Householders’ finances.”

His face fell. She could see the guilt churning in his brain. 

“Hey,” she said, tapping on two styrofoam containers stacked on top of each other, “I ordered dessert, too. Tiramisu.”

“Cake,” Barba said, his eyes lighting up.

“Cake full of sugar and espresso.”

“You know what I need.” He smiled, almost relaxed. “When do you have to head home?”

“Are you propositioning me?” she asked. “I’d like to suggest that we eat the tiramisu in bed, but you’re less than a week out of the hospital.”

He took her hand. “The top half of my body and the bottom half of my body are engaged in an intense debate right now.”

“Poor Rafa.”

“I’m still not strong enough to, uh …”

“You’re only a week out of the hospital.”

“The surgeon wrote me a prescription for physical therapy. I’ll start as soon as I’m out of here.”

“Lucy’s expecting me back at 10. I’ll eat tiramisu in bed with you anyway.”

“Even without —”

“Show me what I have to look forward to.”

They spent the last part of their “date” in the motel’s queen-sized bed, huddled together under the covers, watching television and eating tiramisu out of styrofoam containers with plastic forks. 

“I’m still going back to work on Wednesday,” he told her.

“I know,” she said resignedly. She touched his face with the hand that wasn’t holding the tiramisu container and kissed his lips. They lingered like that for a minute. “You’re a lot like me.”

“Hence the bickering.”

“Squabbling,” she corrected.

“You remember that?”

“I remember a lot.”

“So do I.”

“Listen, Rafa, we’re pretty sure the bookies don’t care whether you’re dead or alive, so long as what they did — whatever the hell it is they did — doesn’t come to light. They killed Al because he was an unwitting connection between them and SVU.”

“And _why_ SVU?” he wondered. “This is the part of their plan, if this was their plan, that makes no sense to me.”

“Let’s not think about that right now.”

With a wicked grin on his face, he touched his index finger to the mascarpone filling in his half-finished dessert, then touched the same finger to Benson’s exposed collarbone, kissing and sucking on her skin with considerable pressure. “A preview,” he muttered, his lips still on her skin. 

She pulled lightly at his hair, eliciting a low groan from him. 

“Got to start that PT soon,” she said.

“Oh, I will, cariño, believe me.” He licked at her collarbone, leaving a few more light kisses there. “Enamorada.” He kissed a path up to her neck.

“If you keep doing that, I’m going to need more, so are you, and you’re going to wind up back in the hospital with a hernia.”

He moved back to lean against the headboard again. “For all that’s happened,” he said, “I’m glad we’re catching up to our —”

“Lie?”

“I was going to say “charade,” but “lie” works just as well.”

“Rafa.” She painted the tip of his nose with mascarpone and espresso powder and he laughed as she removed it with her tongue. “Whatever happens, we’ll make sure you’re safe.”

“I’m not worried.”

“It’s okay if you are.”

“I’m a judge and I’m in bed with Olivia Benson. That’s it. That’s my entire list of lifetime goals. I have no worries.”


	5. Chapter 5

Friday: 

Barba slowly lowered himself into his office chair as the man pointing a gun at him locked the deadbolt behind him, trapping them both inside Barba’s chambers at the Albany courthouse. “Don’t move,” the man said, and it took Barba a full thirty seconds to register that his captor was Peter Stone, the attorney who’d prosecuted him to tears on the stand more than a year ago. 

Barba showed Stone his hands.

“I’ll tell you when you can press that alarm,” Stone said. “You make a move before then, I’ll shoot. Don’t try to bargain with me, there’s nothing left for me to bargain for. Understood?”

“Understood,” he said, feigning calm. 

Beneath his broken ribcage he felt his heart race. In that instant all he could think of was Liv, how she’d blame herself, how she’d be wrong to blame herself, how she’d have to explain to Noah what happened to Uncle Rafa.

The workday was over. No one was in the courthouse except for him, the security guards, and maybe an attorney or two. That must have been how Stone got in with the gun, he realized, he must have used his credentials as a Manhattan ADA to cozy up to someone who worked there.

_Liv, I love you_ , was the only thought keeping him from collapsing onto the floor.

_Get me out of this alive, and I swear I’ll never let Liv down again._

—

On Wednesday morning, Carisi told Benson that the Householders and their lawyer wouldn’t be coming in until the next day. “This isn’t a bad thing,” he promised. “The Householders asking for another day is a pretty good sign they’re looking for a deal, which means they’re going to talk and we’re going to get Linda Gordin and everybody she’s working with, including —”

“Stone.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad, but definitely Stone.”

“What have you got?”

“I talked to a couple guys who worked with the Cubs back then. Assistant coaches, trainers, I found about three who told me the same story: Stone was a gambling man back then, bet on himself a lot. It’s funny, almost, because most players who were socked or asterisked for gambling were betting _against_ themselves. Not Stone. Stone had confidence bordering on stupidity.”

“That’s how they got Al,” Benson said. “As soon as he was in enough debt, where there was no way he could pay it back, they started using him to throw games. Stone must have owed them a lot of money.”

“After he bet on himself in that pennant game where he fell on his face — let’s go Mets — he absolutely did. Trainer heard he bet the Cubs would go all the way to the World Series that year.”

—

Thursday: 

Maggie Householder did most of the talking, with their lawyer occasionally interrupting her to whisper words of advice.

“We were told that the right-to-die case could take up to a year. We didn’t want Drew to suffer like that. A lady at Aaron’s doctor’s office said she could help us with the case and with the medical bills too.”

“Linda Gordin,” Carisi said.

“I knew her as Linda Lowry,” Aaron told them.

“What did she tell you to do?” Carisi prompted. “We need specifics if there’s any chance of you getting immunity.”

“We were supposed to file for divorce,” Maggie said. “Then, Aaron kidnapped Drew to make sure that you guys caught the case. It’s funny, actually —”

“Nothing’s _funny_ about this.” Carisi slammed his hands down on the table. “I’m trying to be nice about this, Mrs. Householder, but you’ve got to tell us everything about how you baited our ADA into flipping the switch that night.”

Maggie swallowed hard. “What I meant was, I didn’t expect him to do it that night. I’m glad he did. I’m glad he got it over with, but … I was supposed to chat with him a few times at the hospital, at his office, and then I was supposed to ask him to flip the switch for me. Linda said she knew something about his family history that meant all I had to do was ask, and he’d probably do it for me. I didn’t even have to ask. I just had to tell him, that first night, that I couldn’t do it myself, and ten minutes later, he’d done it. Turned out to be much easier that we’d expected.”

—

Friday: 

When Benson arrived at the city courthouse, her first instinct was to go to Stone and offer him a chance to tell her everything. She worried that alerting him that they were on to the scheme would get him or the Householders killed, though, and so she avoided the ADA altogether.

However furious she was, she didn’t want Stone to be murdered by the people who’d taken advantage of his gambling debts. 

Maybe she was too kind. Maybe she didn’t want him dead because the punishment for his crimes wasn’t death. Maybe her guilt over letting him spend time with her son was tearing apart her insides.

Maybe it was her guilt over, despite years of experience, not picking up on the fact that the couple everyone felt sorry for was on the take, was screwing over SVU and the DA’s office, their sense of morality clouded by desperation. 

She went upstairs to see McCoy. His administrative assistant said he was busy, but McCoy himself emerged from the inside office and invited her in. He closed the door behind them. “When Olivia Benson comes in a rush to see me, it’s important,” he said.

“Who talked you into charging Rafael with murder?”

“I was —” He had to stop to gather himself, as he was taken aback by the direct question. “I convened a group of prosecutors the day after Rafael was arrested.”

“Was anyone in particular pushing for the murder charge, for not settling for anything less than a murder trial?”

He sat on the couch at the opposite end of his office, hands clasped, face rumpled with concern. “ADA Guardia,” he said. “George Guardia, homicide division. He came over from Chicago seven years ago. Very enthusiastic, very — what the hell did I step into, lieutenant?”

She texted Fin and Carisi the name.

“Everyone — the mayor, the governor, the Attorney General, my bosses — thinks you went overboard with the murder charge, with the trial.”

“Guardia had a counter to every argument we made about pleading Barba out. We were all shaken up. What happened was unprecedented for this office. In retrospect, we were not making good decisions. I was not making good decisions.”

“I need to look at Guardia’s cases without him knowing that I’m looking at them. The Attorney General will have to appoint a special investigator.”

“What have I done?” McCoy said, half to himself.

“What have you done, what have I done, we both fell for an elaborate scheme by a racket to replace Barba with someone friendly to them.”

“In SVU? If they’ve already got Guardia on their side, which is what I’m assuming you’re implying—”

“A special investigator will need to look into your vice division, too.” Her stomach dropped to her knees and she had to sit, take a breath, and compose herself as she considered why they might have wanted to take down Barba. 

“My God,” McCoy said, catching Benson’s drift, “they had people in this office to cover up their racketeering, their murders, and now they needed someone to cover up their sex crimes?”

“Whatever they got away with is on you and me for not recognizing that they set us up. The corrections officers who Barba pissed off were in on it two. They’re the ones who fed Linda Gordin the information about Barba’s family history. We fell for it, all of us.”

“Whatever they _did_ is on them.”

“I don’t know,” Benson said. “Listen, you alert the Attorney General, I’ll alert the Chief, and we’ll hope this is all over soon.”

—

When Dodds called Benson after dinner, she assumed he had news about the special investigator.

He didn’t.

He told her that a car was coming to get her to take her to JFK, that she was already booked on a flight to Albany. He told her why. 

She struggled to keep it together for Noah.

She called Lucy. She called her neighbor to stay with Noah until Lucy got there. 

Barba was being held hostage by Stone in his chambers. They’d been in there for over an hour when Dodds called, after he’d been notified by Flores. A hostage negotiation team was on their way.

She’d been through it five times. She had nightmares on top of nightmares, and she wouldn’t wish those nightmares on anyone, especially not the man she loved.

—

Barba was terrified. 

The muscles in his back, the ribcage still trying to put itself back together, ached for movement, but Stone had ordered him to stay in the chair while he spoke to the negotiators, turning down every offer. 

“Stone,” he finally said, suppressing the tremor in his voice.

“What?” Stone barked, sneering at the man he’d helped depose.

“I can help you come up with a deal that’ll keep you out of jail. A suspended sentence.”

“You think that just because you’ve known you wanted to be a lawyer, or a judge, since you were two days old that you can do any better than I can at getting me out of this?”

“It’s my offer.”

Stone’s cell phone rang. It was the negotiator, wanting to talk to him again. He answered, put the negotiator on speaker, and threw the phone down onto the carpet. The next thing Barba knew, the barrel of Stone’s pistol was pressed to his forehead.

He prayed for Liv, and Noah. If this was how he had to go, so be it, if he was out of options for pleading with Stone for his own life, if Stone was going to take everything — but Liv, and Noah, and his mother too, all he could do was silently hope that the trauma wouldn’t reverberate with them for too long, that they wouldn’t live the rest of their lives with trauma and fear in their hearts.

In that moment, he knew he wanted them to be his family. 

Stone, he noticed, didn’t have his finger on the trigger. 

His fingers were, in fact, entirely on the pistol’s grip. 

Barba remembered the stories that Benson had told him about the times she’d tried to save perps from suicide-by-cop. Couldn’t let them do it, she’d said, in case there was more to their story, in case there was another chapter in the person’s life. 

Her track record had been fifty-fifty. 

“Tell them what I’m doing, Barba,” Stone sputtered, “tell them exactly what I’m doing and we’ll negotiate from there.”

He didn’t tell them. “We’re fine,” Barba said. “Stay back and give us ten more minutes.” He did what he knew Liv would have done.

“We can see inside there,” the negotiator warned.

Hand shaking, Stone pressed the barrel further into Barba’s forehead, but kept his finger off the trigger. “I know you don’t really want to kill me,” Barba said. “I know you’ve been in deep shit for the last decade. I will help you.”

“I’ll help you too, Peter,” a familiar voice said through the speaker. 

“Liv,” Barba said, hearing his own voice tremble.

“Rafa, I’m telling the team out here that if you say you’re fine, then you’re most definitely fine.”

“He’s not fine!” Stone barked, and this time, he put his finger on the trigger, his expression reading nothing but fury.

“Liv, I love you,” Barba said, “tell Mami I love her, all is forgiven, tell Noah —” The words flew out in one quick breath. “Tell Noah I’ll be at all his games, all his school plays, all his graduations, tell him I’ll be there, in spirit, and I promise —”

Stone removed his finger from the trigger, returning it to the grip.

“We’re going in,” a voice said.

“No!” Benson and Barba shouted at the same time.

“Change your mind, put the gun down,” Barba begged Stone.

This time, Stone listened.

“Gun is down, he’s not armed, don’t shoot,” he heard Benson instruct from outside. “ _Do not shoot_.”

Benson repeated her instructions as they burst into Barba’s chambers and grabbed Stone. Barba stumbled right into Benson’s arms. She hugged him tightly as the state police led Stone away.

“You did good,” she assured Barba, “you did so good.” Hot tears rolled down his face. She didn’t let go. Neither did he.

“Am I hurting you?” she asked, loosening her grip a bit.

“I don’t know,” he said, clinging to her. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Okay.” She ran a hand through his hair, at the back of his head. “You’re going to let the medics check you out, and tomorrow morning you and I are taking the train back to the city for a long weekend. Agreed?”

He nodded into her shoulder.

They clung to each other there, the lieutenant and the judge, and cried.


	6. Chapter 6

That Friday was the longest day of Rafael Barba’s life: Stone had stormed into his chambers at 5 and held him hostage for four hours; he’d been looked over by the medics; he’d spent at least half an hour talking to state police about what Stone had said, about what he knew about the sports book from presiding over the Corcoran case, about how he’d had no idea that Dr. Al Pollack was the father of Rollins’s baby, or that he’d had any connection whatsoever to Barba’s former job. By the time he and Benson got back to his apartment, it was after 11.

What had taken place in chambers hadn’t yet registered with him as real.

“You should shower,” Benson said, gently rubbing his back. “It’ll help your muscles.”

He nodded, words of agreement or gratitude unable to reach his lips.

“I know,” she said, continuing to rub his back with her open hand. “It takes a while before it hits you, before you feel it.”

His heart broke for her, in a position where she had to revisit her own trauma in order to comfort him. 

As he showered, all he felt was guilt — thick, ponderous guilt — for how he’d left her a year ago, for how easily he’d fallen for the scheme to depose him.

If the world had been a little more just, ironically, he’d have been more suspicious of the Householders, of why Aaron Householder had filed for divorce, why he’d pointed a paintball gun at Benson, why Maggie had been willing to share so much with an ADA without her own lawyer present. His pompous-if-tearful speech about how he’d learned from Liv to see shades of gray, and then purples and greens and violets — had he said “violets”? Surely he hadn’t said “violets” — chilled him now.

If he’d seen the Householder case in black and white, if he hadn’t convinced himself to follow his misguided empathy, he might have stayed with the DAs office for a few more months, celebrated with Liv when his judicial appointment came through in June, when he took the bench in September, and they’d have worked out a long-distance relationship. The story they’d told the city and state police captains would not have been a lie. 

Barba would have been replaced by someone who was definitely not Stone, because Stone’s connection to the sports book would have been exposed as soon as he told Benson to take a second look at the Householders.

He never would have —

No. 

He didn’t want to think about that moment when Stone put his finger on the trigger, when Barba’s first instinct had been to tell Liv that he loved her, to promise he’d always be there for Noah, even if he —

He shuddered as he stepped out of the shower, drying off before putting on a pair of pajama pants and heading into the bedroom to find an undershirt.

Benson was sitting on the bed in the trousers she’d been wearing all day and a tank top, her feet bare, blouse bundled up next to her, her phone on top of the comforter. One hand covered both of her eyes. She was crying, silently. 

He’d seen her cry only once before.

His heart broke.

Barba hurried to sit beside her, to put an arm around her. “I’m here,” he promised. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She didn’t remove her hand from her face. “I let Stone play baseball with my kid,” she said. “I let him into my personal life. How _stupid_ can I be, after Sheila Porter?”

Now both his arms were around her, holding her tight. “Hey,” he said softly, kissing her temple. “How could you have known?”

“I’m a police lieutenant, a detective for twenty years before that. I should be smarter about who I let spend time with my son.”

“None of us knew,” Barba said.

She lifted her hand. Her eyes were red, the indentations beneath them dark and stained with tears.

“None of us,” he repeated. “I threw away my career and left the woman I’ve been in love with for four years behind for a racketeering coverup.”

Benson smiled faintly.

“What?” he asked.

“There’s a lot to unpack there.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. “For a minute there,” Barba said, swallowing a surge of panic, “I thought — I thought Stone was going to kill me, that he was really going to do it while you were outside listening.”

She loosened herself from the embrace so she could look at him. “I’ve been there, what you just went through, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I hate to see it happen to my best friend.”

He turned and kissed her with all the passion he could muster. 

“Rafa,” she said, touching his cheek, “I forgive you. Now forgive yourself.”

“Quid pro quo.”

“Forgive —” she started to say.

“Yourself.”

“He played baseball with Noah, for God’s sake.”

“Please.” He kissed her cheek, her lips, the tear-stains under her eyes. “Forgive yourself.”

“How are the bruises?” she asked, laying an open hand on his back.

“See for yourself.”

“They’re looking better.” He felt her lips on his back, soft kisses near his injuries, and then a hand on his thigh, sliding upwards, upwards until he was cupping him through his pajama pants. “How’s physical therapy going?”

“I started on Tuesday.” Her hand was in his pants. A years-old fantasy.

“Mm-hmm,” she said, starting to stroke him, “and how are you feeling?”

“I woke up this morning suddenly feeling much better than I’d felt in two weeks. I was ready to call you and tell you I was coming to the city for the weekend.”

“Presumptuous,” she teased, kissing the back of his neck. 

He turned to face her. “Help me take my mind off tonight?”

“For now.” She lifted her shirt over her head, and he leaned in to help her unhook her bra, licking and sucking at her breasts the same way he’d teased the skin near her collarbone on Sunday. 

A hundred groans and gasps and “I love you”s were on their lips. They could finally move on, finally, together.

—

Early in the morning, too early, they caught the train to Penn Station. After Barba finished his thermos of coffee, Benson asked how he was feeling. 

“Good,” he said, taking her hand in his. 

“You’ll talk to victims’ services about a therapist on Tuesday?”

He rolled his eyes, but breathed out through pursed lips. “Yes,” he promised. 

“Lucy called while you were in the shower last night. She told me Noah had caught wind of what happened to you on the news when she left the living room for a second. He was crying. So, brace yourself.”

“That’s why you were —”

“Upset.”

“I haven’t seen him since before my trial,” Barba commented.

“But last night, when you said you loved him, when you said you’d be at all his school plays and baseball games and graduations, I knew.”

“You knew?”

“I knew.” She patted his hand. “And it’s too soon, it’s _too soon_ , but I want to look into whether the state police or Attorney General needs a special victims investigator.”

“So you can live in Albany?”

“So I can do for the state what I did for the city in terms of timely investigations, careful forensics, and believing victims.” She flashed him a broad, beautiful smile. “And it’s too soon to say “so I can live in the same city as you,” but your judicial appointment is for —“

“Ten years.”

“Ten years, and I’m not waiting ten years for you to come back to the city.”

“But you _are_ Manhattan SVU.”

“And is that a good thing, professionally or personally? SVU needs a restructuring, it needs programs in place to prevent turnover, to make sure all cops know how to handle sexual assault cases, not a superhero.”

“Are you saying —”

“I’m saying,” she told him as they watched the Hudson Valley roll by outside the window, “it’s time for me to move on.”

—

Lucy texted Benson that she’d taken Noah to Rollins’s place, and the whole work family was there. They stopped at Benson’s apartment so she could change clothes and take a second shower (“how much time to we have?” Barba asked, and she answered “not enough” but invited him to join her in the shower anyway, and then they had to scramble to peel off Barba’s surgical shield and get re-dressed) before heading uptown to the apartment that Rollins had inherited, in a sense, from Al Pollack.

Carisi and Fin were there. The whole work family, as Lucy had said.

“Sweet boy,” Benson said when she saw Noah, but Noah walked past her and threw his arms around Barba instead.

Barba, obviously struggling to hide his surprise, hugged the boy back.

Rollins, who was on the couch nursing Layla, mouthed _he was so upset_ to Benson.

Barba knelt down to Noah’s level, and Benson saw him twist and turn a bit to relieve his muscle spasms. “Amigo,” he said, a real smile on his face, “I missed you.”

“Are you leaving?” he asked brusquely.

“On Tuesday I have to go back to my job in Albany.”

“No, don’t,” Noah begged.

“But Noah,” Barba said, “how about I visit every other weekend, two times a month?”

“You didn’t last time.”

“No. I didn’t. You’re right.”

Noah was suddenly timid, shrinking back from Barba. “How come?” he asked.

“I don’t know, amigo. I wish I did.”

Benson noticed that her sergeant and senior detectives and nanny were watching the scene intensely. 

“Was it because of Mr. Stone? Or Grandma Sheila?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why would you think that?’ Benson asked, but she already knew. He’d seen on the news that Peter Stone, the man he’d played baseball with, had held Uncle Rafa _hostage_ , just like Grandma Sheila had held his mother _hostage_ after she’d kidnapped him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sweet boy,” she said, opening her arms to him. “I should have talked to you.” That was the best she could do without apologizing for introducing Peter Stone into his life, without acknowledging her sin, without acknowledging that she’d made decisions that might have made Noah less safe. 

Tentatively, Noah walked into her embrace.

—

“To Amanda Rollins, one of the smartest damn detectives I’ve ever worked with,” Benson said, raising her glass of Cabernet in Rollins’s direction. They were in the back room at Forlini’s, which they’d rented to celebrate Rollins’s and Carisi’s departures. “And to Sonny Carisi, who has a brilliant legal mind even if he had a horrible mustache his first few months with the squad.”

_Here, here_ s echoed through the room. Rollins stood and embraced Benson, then Carisi, then Fin. “Thank you,” she told Fin, “for all those years we were partners, for being the type of partner who doesn’t let you get away with nothing.”

“Same here,” Fin said. “Hey, Liv, you ready to make your announcement?”

“Fin,” she warned.

“You said you’d tell them this morning.”

“Just us, for now,” she said to her squad. “Come here.”

She led them to a corner of the room that was relatively free from chatter. “Fin is interim commander of SVU starting September 1st. That’s my official retirement date.”

“Lieu, you’re so young, you can’t possibly be over 29, what’re you doing retiring?” Carisi joked, and Rollins smacked his arm. 

“It’s not necessarily a compliment to tell a woman she can’t possibly be over 29,” Rollins said. “So what’s up with the retirement, Fearless Leader?”

“On September 16th I start as a special investigator for the sex crimes division of the Attorney General’s office.”

“You’re gonna get the staties in line,” Carisi said, a smile on his face.

“That’s the plan. I’ll be collecting both a paycheck and a pension, living the dream.”

“In Albany?” Rollins asked.

“Yes.”

“Dodds, incoming,” Fin warned.

“Chief, you made it,” Benson said, shaking his hands. 

“Had to congratulate two of SVU’s best detectives.”

“I see,” Rollins said, “we only get praise when we’re on our way out.”

Dodds laughed, but Benson knew Rollins had a point. “We will be, per Lieutenant Benson’s recommendations, restructuring SVU over the summer.”

“As long as there’s always a big picture of Lieutenant Benson on the wall in the squadroom,” Carisi said, demonstrating the size of the proposed picture with his hands. “Or a mural. A mural, with a plaque that says _Lieutenant Olivia Benson, Fearless Leader._ ”

“Oh, you should, it’d be tacky, and perfect,” Rollins said.

“Where’s the judge tonight?” Dodds asked.

“Still on his way down,” Benson told him. “He left around 3. The trains are slow.”

A friend waved Carisi and Rollins over, leaving the three commanding officers by themselves. “For the record,” Dodds said, “when Flores and I spoke about why you were in Albany —”

“Liv did what she had to do to make sure our kidnap victim was safe,” Fin interrupted.

“I know,” Dodds said. “We’ve been through a lot, but —”

She heard Fin breathe a puff of air through his nose. He’d warned her a year ago that Dodds had hastily circulated a memo about the Sheila Porter incident that hinted that Benson did not have the decision-making skills necessary to head up SVU. 

“When Flores and I spoke about why you were in Albany and said that you and Barba were together, I knew right away that you and Barba were full of shit.”

“We —”

“You went up there to see what was happening with Corcoran. I’m a little more with it than the staties.”

“Why didn’t you chew me out? I wasn’t supposed to go near Corcoran.”

“It was a good lie.”

“A good lie?”

“Because it brought you two back together. Not that your personal life is any of my business.”

Benson tried not to roll her eyes.

Barba arrived at Forlini’s a few minutes later. As he kissed her hello, she muttered, “Dodds knows we were lying back in February.”

“You’re retiring in three months. What can he do?”

“He didn’t say anything because he wanted to see us get together for real.”

“Ha, he played matchmaker?”

“He did.”

Following additional toasts and speeches — and much good-natured heckling of Carisi — Benson and Barba took a cab back to Benson’s place. She and Noah would move in with Barba in mid-August, two weeks before her official retirement, so Noah had time to adjust before Benson started her new job with the Attorney General.

She’d still be working with Manhattan SVU from time to time, and with Carisi, who’d be part of the Attorney General’s Manhattan office. And she and Rollins promised they’d stay in touch and visit each other whenever they could.

The pattern of every new opportunity equaling the end of a relationship was crumbling.

Barba unbuckled his seatbelt and slid closer to Benson. “I’m glad Dodds didn’t push back on our lie,” he said. “Did I ever tell you how much it meant to me that you stayed with me in the hospital that night?”

“I know,” she said, patting his hand. “I know.”

He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small box. “You’d have hung me out to dry if I did this in public.”

“It’s green,” she commented, looking at the ring inside, which consisted of some sort of green gem in a white gold setting.

“You always looked good in green.”

“Rafa,” she said, removing the ring from the box.

“It’s only been four months, but for us it’s also been seven years. Wherever we were in our lives, it was always you and me.”

“Here, put this on my finger.” She handed him the ring.

“First, a promise.”

She bit her lip and looked at him suspiciously.

“Promise,” he said, “you’ll forgive yourself.”

“Well,” she said loudly, “I guess Benson-and-Barba isn’t endgame after all.”

“Endgame?” he said, laughing.

“Rollins. She’s been saying you and I are —”

“Olivia, will you marry me?”

“Yes. Of course. We’re endgame. We’re Act 5.”

“I’m working on forgiving myself for last year, for interfering in a right-to-die case that I was too stupid to see wasn’t really a right-to-die case, and for what an asshole I was to you.”

“Good.”

“And …?” he prompted.

“I will try to do the same.”

—

On a cold February afternoon just after he’d resigned from the DA’s office, Rafael Barba left Olivia Benson, telling her that after all he’d done, all he’d seen, he had to move on. On a chilly December evening in upstate New York almost two years later, Rafael Barba and Olivia Benson were married. In public, he made the same promises he’d made to Liv, and to Noah, a thousand times in private: he was theirs, he wasn’t going anywhere, and whenever he moved on, he would always move on with them, with his family.

Benson and Barba were endgame.


End file.
